again, just a little bit, and said:
'Well--here goes, then. Once upon a time--but first, can you move your
right hand? Turn it just a little bit more this way. There! Cuddle it
down! Now, you see, I've made a little home for it in mine. Ouch!
Don't press down too hard! I think my wrist is broken. All ready,
then? You won't cry another cry? Promise? All right then. Here goes.
Once upon a time--'

"Never mind about the story," said the Youngish Girl tersely. "It
began about the first thing in all his life that he remembered
seeing--something funny about a grandmother's brown wig hung over the
edge of a white piazza railing--and he told me his name and address,
and all about his people, and all about his business, and what banks
his money was in, and something about some land down in the Panhandle,
and all the bad things that he'd ever done in his life, and all the
good things, that he wished there'd been more of, and all the things
that no one would dream of telling you if he ever, ever expected to
see Daylight again--things so intimate--things so--

"But it wasn't, of course, about his story that I wanted to tell you.
It was about the 'home,' as he called it, that his broken hand made
for my--frightened one. I don't know how to express it; I can't
exactly think, even, of any words to explain it. Why, I've been all
over the world, I tell you, and fairly loafed and lolled in every
conceivable sort of ease and luxury, but the Soul of me--the wild,
restless, breathless, discontented _soul_ of me--_never sat down
before in all its life_--I say, until my frightened hand cuddled into
his broken one. I tell you I don't pretend to explain it, I don't
pretend to account for it; all I know is--that smothering there under
all that horrible wreckage and everything--the instant my hand went
home to his, the most absolute sense of serenity and contentment went
over me. Did you ever see young white horses straying through a
white-birch wood in the springtime? Well, it felt the way that
_looks_!--Did you ever hear an alto voice singing in the candle-light?
Well, it felt the way that _sounds_! The last vision you would like to
glut your eyes on before blindness smote you! The last sound you would
like to glut your ears on before deafness dulled you! The last
touch--before Intangibility! Something final, complete,
supreme--ineffably satisfying!

"And then people came along and rescued us, and I was sick in the
hospital for several week